1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a flat circuit device, especially to the flat circuit device having a conductor of a belt-shape and a covering portion, which can attach a terminal to the conductor by placing the conductor on a bottom wall sandwiched between a pair of crimping pieces of a terminal and by crimping the pair of the crimping pieces.
2. Description of the Related Art
A motor vehicle is equipped with a variety of electronic devices. The motor vehicle includes a wire harness for supplying electric power of a battery and control signal of a controller to the electronic devices. The wire harness has an electric wire and a connector. The connector has a housing formed with a synthetic resin, and a terminal received into the housing and connected with an end portion of the electric wire.
The electronic devices mounted in the motor vehicle have been increasing in accordance with multi-functions requested by users. Accordingly, the wire harness has also been increasing in mass and volume.
In order to make the wire harness smaller, the flat circuitry such as FFC (Flexible Flat Cable) and FPC (Flexible Printed Circuit) is proposed as the electric wire.
The flat circuit device has a conductor of a belt-shape and a covering portion for covering the conductor. The flat circuit device has the plurality of the conductors extending in parallel each other and the conductors are each insulated with the covering portion.
EP1363362 discloses that when a terminal is connected to a conductor of a flat circuitry, the conductor is bent to match with a shape of the terminal and the terminal is connected to the conductor. Thereby, the attachment can be certainly performed, and contact failure of the conductor and the terminal can be avoided.
A method of connecting the terminal to the conductor disclosed in EP1363362 requires a metal mold to form the conductor so as to match the shape of the terminal, and a metal mold for crimping the terminal to the conductor. Accordingly, a cost of connecting the terminal tends to increase.
Also, as shown in EP1363362, the conductor may be attached to the terminal by placing the conductor on a pair of crimping pieces of the terminal and crimping the crimping pieces without change in shape by a terminal attached to the conductor. The conductor is formed into a flat shape and changes easily. Therefore, even a minimal force changes the conductor to a complex shape easily. For this reason, the terminal can not certainly connect to the conductor surely so that the conductor is changed into a shape matched to the crimping pieces.